Quite similar to last year.
I thought I noticed a trend to non-fiction
last year: if so it's stayed similar rather
than increasing. Very few comics this year,
I haven't seen that much of interest lately.

HighlightsNon-fiction
Probably the most important book was Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
which took a hard and well-researched look at the way corporations
have hired a few science hacks to cast doubt on any research that
threatens their profits.

Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine
was another debunking of sociobiology like "Love of Shopping is Not a Gene"? Is another one really needed:
sadly yes, and it focused on gender not just genetics in general.

The New East End is a fascinating and neutral account of the various groups in the modern East End of London.

Finally, things that may only appeal to me:
"The Inner Citadel" by Pierre Hadot deepened my knowledge of Marcus Aurelius. My Life and Times by Jerome K. Jerome was a fascinating
account of the Edwardian era from the inside.

SF/FantasyWinterstrike by Liz Williams was a little flawed, but still a detailed and atmospheric novel set on a future Mars.
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
was pretty good too. I'm a little late to this party,
but The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman
are great fantasies, smartening up and darkening down the themes
of Harry Potter and Narnia.

Non-SF fiction
I'd put it off for ages, but
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
turned out to be a much funnier, faster-paced book than I expected:
a satire written and set in the early stages of the Soviet era.

Comics
Very few comics this year, but Will Eisner's Life in the Big City stood out for his great artwork and passion for his subject. It's a large compilation of short pieces, so something to dip into not read in a giant session.

Thinking about it, I usually read comics as book-like anthologies not the actual issues, so maybe 2010 was a bad year for comics...--It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

The zombie fad has been building for a while by lm (4.00 / 1) #4Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 08:19:47 AM EST

I think it's a fairy tale thing. More people can relate to zombies than to wicked step-mothers these days. So it's a way to concretize fears that lurk just below the surface of the way that our society is structure. And it does so by means of a mostly harmless narrative that can be good fun to act out.There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.Cicero, The Republic

The TV show is faithful for the first episode or so, then diverges. The entire first episode was a few pages in the comic. I felt like the TV show got a lot more out of a few of the first conflicts and generated more interesting ones. For instance the racist brother is entirely from the TV serious and the love triangle with the partner is resolved quickly with a bullet in the comic.

There is also a misogynist streak in the comics that I find very bothersome. The comic is even darker, and there's a lot of self-destruction by damaged personalities, but I often felt like the writers were telling, not showing in this regard.---[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

I read that 2001 or so, before The Wire, etc. It still stays with me. "Gimme a quarter." The child doing his schoolwork in the squalid house. And of course, the central mystery of who killed the little girl.

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